Presumably, nobody here remembers their ride down the birth canal. But did you have that memory when you were first born, then forgot it at some time in the future of your life? If so, how long did those first memories last? When does a person’s “permanent” memory (by that, I mean the memory you take into adulthood) begin?
I have scant memories of various moments during my parent’s marriage, which ended when I was four. So my first memories are around age 3. Does that mean I forgot the memories from my first 3 years, or did I never have them?
There was a very similar thread in the last year or 2 that had some very heated debate on earliest memories. I wouldn’t know the exact keywords to use to find it though. (You have to wait 300 seconds between each attempt which makes diggiing through archives impossible with just a vague idea of the keywords.)
I have some vague memories of sucking on a nipple which probably fall somewhere between 0 and 6 months. Interestingly I don’t have any visual or auditory memory from that episode at all. It pretty much amounts to the tactile memory of sucking on a nipple along with a sense taste.
I do know that as a young child I thought about this particular memory at one point, so it is possible that now all I remember is a memory about the memory, but I can conjure up the sensation if I try.
I would say that the brain is always forming memories but they are not always formed in a way that can be translated into conscious thought about the memory.
My memory may be faulty but that’s not the specific thread I was remembering.
The thread I was thinking of was more than 2 pages of discussion and I think **WhyNot **contributed to it. I also remember people claiming to have memories of being in the womb and being called liars (or false memories, etc). It was really a fight fest.
Well, givn the non-distinct nature of human brainpower, you do have memories of that age, but they are not distinct from the motor skills and functional body awareness you developed…
I have bits and pieces of fragmented memories from my very early years but I’m not sure if they’re memories or images based on stories that I was told after the fact. I have one crystal clear memory of something that didn’t happen so all of them are suspect to me now. I also have some memories based on things that I misinterpreted, like flying through the air in our car to see my grandmother in heaven when in reality we went to the nursing home and she died shortly after that. I remember her in a bed, giving me a watch and according to my mom that really did happen. I was about 3 at the time so I think that’s my first real memory that I can confirm.
This is correct, or at least so far as the most informed speculation by neuroscientists can verify. You are certainly forming memories at birth (and before) but without a context by which to assemble and integrate them they cannot be considered “conscious” memories any more than a sea slug can convert long term potentiation in its simplistic neural structures into a sonnet.
I doubt anyone can consciously remember being birthed or from the womb based on the lack of context to form a coherent memory, but impressions therefrom are probably encoded somewhere, just not in any form usable. It is also very, very easy to conflate memories, or modify them after the fact. Oliver Sacks reports clearly seeing a bomb explode outside his childhood home in London during a blitz; it turned out that he was not in London at the time this occurred; his brother described the event in detail to him, and he later recalled it as his own memory with the exact same details in a strange, Phil Dickian-like transference.
Speaking anecdotally, I have clear (if fleeting) memories of eating baby food (liked the red stuff, hated the green stuff), a Winnie-The-Pooh mobile above my crib, falling over in the grass in one of those hideous baby walker things, and wearing diapers. On that basis I’d guess that my memory goes back before two years of age, possibly back to close to a year. I have very clear memories of being three and four, including names and faces of people, and vehicles (or at least colors of) owned by my parents I would not have seen after that age. I’m a little astonished by people who claim to not be able to remember prior to grade school, but no doubt development of robust memory varies as much as other states of intellectual and emotional development in children. I would guess that there is probably a strong correlation to robust memory and early intellectual development (reading, mathematics), as the latter would require the former.
I am also at least as astonished by the very high estimates of early memory retention like ages 4 - 6. I have many that are definitely real and include many, many details and not just snapshots. In high school, I once got bored one day and wrote out my entire class schedule from kindergarten onwards without much effort. It wasn’t hard to verify because my mother was a teacher in my small town and could verify most of it (she was my public school teacher for two years as well; I sat in the back of the class).
I have a lot of early memories starting, lets say, at 2 1/2. I had little Sesame Street figures when I was just about 3 years old and I lost Bert (the evil one). I got upset and my mother told me not to worry about it because it would “Turnip”. I had no idea what that meant but I had faith. Some time later, she was helping me to clean up my room and lifted my toy chest. Sure enough, Bert was right under it looking like a plant with the hair sticking straight up into the air. I guess he rooted. It wasn’t until several years later that understood what she actually said although I remembered the conversation clearly. I just lacked the language understanding and context for it at the time.
I have some vague memories from before I turned 2. Because of events and locale, they’re easy to place. My clear and consistent memory begins between 2-3. I remember the arrangement of that apartment, my friend, my toys, my guinea pig, and events that were significant to me but not the stuff of family stories. I remember not only events but my thoughts and feelings. I remember learning new words. I remember the odors of the Chinese neighbors’ apartment. I remember my great-grandmother giving me Ovaltine, a one-time event. I remember my 3rd birthday party, and I remember discussing with my mother at the time how it was different from my 2nd. I remember my sister’s birth when I was just over 3. From about 3 on, while I certainly don’t remember everything, I remember many things, and have no gaps.
Problem is that is true for more recent memories. For instance, I remember the first time I had sex. But I certainly conjured this memory many times, thought about it, mentioned it, etc… Can I say I remember the actual event? Is it any different from my earliest memories (mentioned in the other thread) when I was 3 and a half?
Plus, as I also mentioned in the old thread, there’s this instance of an early memory erupting when I saw an old picture of myself holding a daffy duck toy. Until this day, I had no memory of this toy. And suddenly, upon watching the picture, not only I remembered it, but I remembered the taste of its beak ( presumably, I used to munch on it). These informations had to be “stored” somewhere, out of reach, and still intact enough to the point of preserving even taste and texture, just waiting for a trigger (the picture of the toy) to reach my conscious mind.
How many “dormant” memories are “stored” in such a way? How precise are they? If the appropriate trigger was presented to me, would I suddenly remember what I had for dinner on september 17 1989, for instance? What was my mood at this instant? Is there a mental picture of this meal, buried somewhere in my brain, so exact that if it was recoverable in some way, one could count the exact number of beans in the plate?
At what age is my first memory? Somewhere around 2yrs, I think.
I’m in my highchair, and there was a toy in the cereal. A plastic, rubber band powered Wilt Chamberlain that threw a basketball. I remember I had to wait for my Dad to put it together, and he was out of town. When he finally did put it together, Wilt’s first shot went right under the refrigerator. I do remember my second birthday, I got a haircut, and it sucked. My third birthday I remember thinking “She said it was My birthday cake, so it must be OK to eat some.” As I was reaching for a grubby toddler handful. That one is somewhere inbetween, closer to the third, based on location.
I also remember a dream I had around then.
Mom and Dad and I were driving somewhere, but then the car went off the road, flew through the air and landed in a swamp. We started walking, and came across a large carnival style cage/stage thing with a monster in it. My folks asked if the monster would watch me, while they went for help. The monster was agreeable. A tall, blue shaggy thing he was, a cross between bigfoot and the cookie monster. I didn’t want to stay, but they showed me behind the backdrop was a big room with toys, so OK. I don’t remember what toys, or playing, but I remember tricking the monster to let me out. I slammed the door shut, trapping him inside, then I urinated on him.
It seems I was a wierd and disturbing/ed person, even way back then.
I remember things from first year of primary school (age ~ 5), I don’t remember anything before then. Earlier this week my Mum showed me some photos of me as a toddler with one of my Grandma’s friends who occasionally looked after me - I didn’t remember anything about her or recognise her from the photos.
I remember ‘running away from home’ when I was very small; I was wearing a diaper, so I couldn’t have been older than two. My mother left me with a babysitter and went to work. I remember sitting up eating chips with the babysitter’s child, and then waking up wanting my mother. I also remember opening the screen door. The next memory is walking across a lawn and seeing headlights (the police officer who found me). Then I remember sitting on a desk at the police station, eating a candy bar while they asked me my name.
The reason I know I was wearing a diaper is because the police tried to charge the babysitter with neglect, but my mother insisted that the incident was just an unfortunate one-off thing. She told them to check me, that the babysitter was so careful with my diaper that I’d never had a single rash.
My opinions are based merely on conjecture, pop psychology, and my own personal experiences, but I do believe there are dormant memories that are stored in the mind, which can be triggered by seemingly inoccuous reminders.
However, I also believe these hidden memories are generally limited to times when there were great emotional highs or lows, which, in a sense, “seared” the memory into the psyche. The reminder of these hidden memories almost always correllates to some emotional reminiscence, too.
So, I suspect a visceral recollection of a toy duck would be a rare hidden memory, since it’s pretty mundane (unless the duck had some emotional significance). But I would think it would be more typical to have deeply ingrained memories of emotionally charged events, like a birthday, a first kiss, or that time a kid saw Daddy beating Mommy, which might manifest themselves psychologically later in life.
Since I became a behavior therapist, I’ve been having this experience a lot because I am being re-exposed to childhood things. One of my clients got a book from the library called “Happy Birthday Moon.” The picture of the bear of the cover caused me to remember that there was another book in this series about the bear building a spaceship, going to the moon, and eating mooncake. I had zero memory of this book, read to me in preschool, until the moment of seeing the picture.
To answer the OP, my earliest memories are of my mother being pregnant with my sister, which would put me just shy of 2 1/2 at the time.
